Assessing a new course
11:58 am on the 17th of September, 2007I’ve said this before, but in introducing 2 year Highers at Ross High there is scope to move from teaching the course as a ‘two term dash’ to having time to further explore the parts of the courses that otherwise get glossed over or missed altogether. In the Product Design course the pupils spend their 4th year working through whole projects and then making the product.
We are getting towards the end of the first project now and my thoughts are turning to how it is to be assessed. In a normal Higher you teach some content then assess with a NAB, a centrally set test. In this project though the aim wasn’t to pass an Outcome, but what was it? Sure, there are some aims like gain an understanding of vacuum forming, develop a better understanding of the design process, but looking back I wonder how well as a department we have shared these intentions with the classes - I know I haven’t done this particularly well. And what about specific Learning Outcomes?
Then thinking about how to assess the projects I’m pretty keen to get the pupils involved. A big part of the Product Design course (and design generally) is to analyse and evaluate existing stuff, so to me it makes absolute sense that the pupils should evaluate each other’s designs and folios. It would also steer them away from wanting a grade.
Tags: AiFL, assessment, Learning-Outcomes, Product Design, Shared-Intentions
September 17th, 2007 at 10:07 pm on the 17th of September, 2007
It’s maybe too late for this - when classes are working on something which has an end product (for me likely to be a piece of writing or a talk/conversation), we start by deciding together what the success criteria will be, they then peer assess using their original success criteria and then give 2 stars and a wish. I usually do the same - they can be quite hard on each other. With S4 pupils have been using the SQA criteria to grade each other’s work too. Not sure that peer assessing will stop them wanting a grade, but it’s still a useful thing to do.
Another way we might peer assess is again using the criteria, pupils assess in pairs. On post it notes write one of the criteria for success (ie for me this might be “uses a variety of structures”/”well structured”). Pairs then go around and look at everyone else’s work - give them a time limit, when you say so they put the post it note on the piece of work they thing is the best example of the success criteria. They must be able to justify their choice - no just choosing their friends - and tell the rest of the class why they have chosen a particular piece.
September 22nd, 2007 at 2:51 pm on the 22nd of September, 2007
Thanks for that Lynne, somehow my email about this comment slipped into my spam folder.
I like the idea of post-it notes. This is something that might work well with this class, I’ll bear it in mind. I’ll try to share the responsibility of deciding the success criteria as well.
September 22nd, 2007 at 7:27 pm on the 22nd of September, 2007
You can never have too many post it notes - uses are endless! I noticed a catalogue from a company the other day who were selling them with comments already on them - I may have missed an enterprise opportunity.
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